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TrueLayer has been officially authorised to take part in the open banking scheme, which is led by the European Payments Council (EPC).
TrueLayer has officially joined the SEPA Payment Account Access (SPAA) scheme.
Version 1.1 of the SPAA scheme rulebook was implemented at the end of November last year, much to the enthusiasm of payments players.
This initiative is set to redefine the landscape of account-to-account payments in Europe and TrueLayer has become the first company to join the scheme.
“Our inclusion in the first SPAA register underscores our commitment to innovation and our role in advancing the next era of payments across Europe,” said Joe Morley, EU CEO for TrueLayer.
Morley explained that SPAA is the long-awaited commercial API framework that will allow banks to directly monetise their investment in open banking.
"I expect that others will join the scheme quite quickly over the next few weeks and months,” Morley told Vixio. “We were very eager to do it as soon as possible, and there has been a great desire to get this scheme up and running."
The SPAA initiative, extending beyond compliance with the European Union’s Payments Services Directive (PSD2), introduces new features designed to support growth in the European open banking ecosystem.
Within SPAA, European banks have an opportunity to develop and offer premium open banking APIs and be remunerated for access to these APIs.
"This brings a clear pathway to monetise the investments made on PSD2 APIs by the banks. It is a huge development as, finally, there is clarity for banks about how this can work,” said Morley.
Morley explained that this is something that the company has always been supportive of as a fintech. “It has been clear from day one that the incumbent banking industry has not been entirely happy about how PSD2 has panned out.”
“It was seen as a compliance burden, and banks had no clear path to payback,” he commented.
Going forward, Morley speculated that the EPC will continue to work on this throughout 2024. “There will start to be pilots being launched and consideration given to the operational mechanics and how to address things like billing."
SPAA’s origins go back to 2021 when the EPC was tasked by the European Retail Payments Board to create premium open banking services going beyond PSD2 compliance.
The project aims to stimulate the adoption of account-to-account payments and provide competition to incumbent card payments.
“We look forward to continuing to support the development and rollout of SPAA,” Morley said.
